PMC-3D: a parallel three-dimensional Monte Carlo semiconductor device simulator

Author

Ranawake, Udaya A. ; Huster, Carl ; Lenders, Patrick M. ; Goodnick, Stephen M.

Author_Institution

Hughes STX Corp., Lanham, MA, USA

Volume

13

Issue

6

fYear

1994

fDate

6/1/1994 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

712

Lastpage

724

Abstract

We present PMC-3D, a parallel three-dimensional (3-D) Monte Carlo device simulator for multiprocessors. The parallel algorithm is an extension of the standard Monte Carlo device simulation model in 3-D, in which the particle dynamics generated from the stochastic Monte Carlo method are solved simultaneously with Poisson´s equation on a 3-D mesh using finite differences. Due to the large computational requirements of 3-D device simulation, it is necessary to parallelize both the Poisson solver and the Monte Carlo simulation phase of the device simulator. The parallel algorithms were implemented on a 1024-node distributed memory nCUBE multicomputer and a 4-mode shared memory Ardent multiprocessor. We validate the accuracy of our implementations by generating the static characteristics of a MESFET and present test results on the fixed and scaled speedups obtained on the two types of parallel computers. Improvements in performance are observed utilizing dynamic load balancing for the distributed memory case

Keywords

Monte Carlo methods; digital simulation; distributed memory systems; electronic engineering computing; parallel algorithms; semiconductor device models; 3D Monte Carlo device simulator; 3D mesh; PMC-3D; Poisson equation; Poisson solver; distributed memory nCUBE multicomputer; dynamic load balancing; finite differences; multiprocessor implementation; parallel algorithm; parallel three-dimensional simulator; particle dynamics; semiconductor device simulator; shared memory Ardent multiprocessor; simulation model; stochastic Monte Carlo method; Character generation; Computational modeling; Concurrent computing; Finite difference methods; MESFETs; Mesh generation; Monte Carlo methods; Parallel algorithms; Poisson equations; Stochastic processes;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0278-0070

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/43.285244

Filename

285244